Strung beneath the cool eaves of your house, are cobwebs. They do not move in the silence, or to more dust from the rafters;
they are still filament caught in an eye of time. High on a dim mountain ledge, pale and animated goats
slither, and irritate minor rock to the scree below. A trapped avalanche enters a long predicament.
In the lower valley, most windows are open. Above, the clean lakes are calm, untroubled by fly-nosing fish.
Your one upstairs window is still, notched half-open. A silence is in command as you open it wider; lean out.
======================= First published in Spokes 23 May 1993 from Bedfordshire. Ref. the Bernese Oberland =======================
Trees in theClouds
The dirt on the verges ran to pasture then a cool granite, soft with a higher green.
Dawn had broken up in the mountains. All awake, we had driven through the night. On the flashing summer motorway, our windscreen grew smudged.
We flew on bridges that were curves in air and than into a tree-lined, dappled stretch. There were shadows moving in the fir and conjured horizons, widening to an abrupt lip. A deep tract of light hung around dim peaks.
You left the car to climb above the road and asked: what is there in the cloud on through the damp trees?
============================== First published in 'Breakfast for Caliban' Tempest Poets The Rockingham Press (1996)
